Jury out in Rotherham child sex abuse trial

Arshid Hussain

THE jury has retired to consider its verdicts in the trial of five men and two women charged with offences relating to alleged child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

For two months Sheffield Crown Court has heard allegations that teenage girls were repeatedly raped, beaten, passed between abusers and used as prostitutes.

The jury was told that one girl was locked in a house in the South Yorkshire town for weeks as she was forced to have sex with a succession of men.

The court also heard that a 12-year-old girl was forced to perform sex acts with a group of men in a car after she was picked up from a children’s home, another girl was called a “white bitch and trash” after she was forced to have oral sex, and the mother of one alleged victim was threatened with her house being firebombed.

At the beginning of the trial, prosecutor Michelle Colborne QC told the jurors they would hear from women who were “targeted, sexualised and in some instances subjected to acts of a degrading and violent nature” when they were teenagers. She said a number of these girls became pregnant during the abuse.

Some were living in children’s homes where, in one case, “seemingly no-one was interested in whether she returned in a bloodied state”.

• Arshid Hussain, 40, of High Street, East Cowick, Goole, denies one count of conspiracy to rape, 11 indecent assaults, five rapes, one other serious sexual assault, one count of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sex with another, one count of false imprisonment, two counts of procuring a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, one count of attempting to procure a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse, two counts of abducting a 15-year-old girl, one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, two counts of aiding and abetting rape and one of aiding and abetting another serious sexual assault.

• Qurban Ali, 53, of Clough Road, Masborough, Rotherham, denies one count each of indecent assault, rape, procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another and conspiracy to rape.

• Sajid Bostan, 38, of Broom Avenue, Broom, Rotherham, denies three rapes, two counts of aiding and abetting rape, one indecent assault and one other serious sexual assault.

• Basharat Hussain, 39, of no fixed address, denies one rape, five indecent assaults, one count of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another, false imprisonment, three counts of indecency with a child, one count of procuring a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, two assaults occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of making threats to kill.

• Karen MacGregor, 58, of Barnsley Road, Wath-upon-Dearne, South Yorkshire, and Rotherham, denies one count of conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, false imprisonment and and two counts of conspiracy to rape.

• Shelley Davies, 40, of Wainwright Road, Kimberworth Park, Rotherham, denies one count of conspiracy to procure a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, false imprisonment and conspiracy to rape.

• During the course of the trial, Davies was cleared of the charge of conspiracy to rape she faces and Arshid Hussain was cleared of one of the counts of abduction he faces - both on the directions of Judge Sarah Wright.